fbpx Biennale Arte 2022 | Geumhyung Jeong
La Biennale di Venezia

Your are here

Geumhyung Jeong

1980, South Korea


  • TUE - SUN
    23/04 > 25/09
    11 AM - 7 PM

    FRI - SAT UNTIL 25/09
    11 AM - 8 PM

    TUE - SUN
    27/09 > 27/11
    10 AM - 6 PM
  • Arsenale
  • Admission with ticket

Techno-capitalism has us hurtling towards a digitally native society and yet, still, there is something deeply unsettling about human/non-human interaction. Choreographer and performance artist Geumhyung Jeong uses her body and animatronic figures built from DIY parts to emphasise the uncanny relationships that have developed between people and machines. Her work occupies an in-between space – a comfort with technology that is uncomfortable, a sensitivity towards objects that is non-consensual, a beautiful and horrifying revelation of techno-social opposition and similitude. Jeong intentionally maintains an amateur, toy-like, experimental quality to her engineered beings. They are clunky but responsive, alluring but humble. Their playfulness is foregrounded in the curious amalgamation of prosthetic parts. The “toys” on view here – presented alongside videos documenting Jeong’s own interactions with her machines – are DIY robots created by the artist following her self-taught learning in programming electronic circuits and mechanisms, a process she has compared to sewing stitch-by-stitch. While they initially appear sturdy and functional, these robots reveal their fragile instability when they begin to move. Imbuing her “toys” with a clumsiness that evokes the desire to pamper and care for them from the human observer, Jeong creates encounters between human and machine that test our capacity for empathy when non-human entities seem to need our help. 

Isabella Achenbach

Production credits

Toy Prototype, 2021
Sculptures and video installation.
DIY robotic sculptures built of various materials  including aluminium profiles and DC motors, remote controllers made of medical simulators and joysticks, and 9 videos added in 2022 for the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Commissioned by National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in 2021
Supported by Korea Foundation 


Share this page on

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on LinkedINSend via WhatsApp
Biennale Arte
Biennale Arte